


Headcanon

by settledownfrohike



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 11:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11462271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/settledownfrohike/pseuds/settledownfrohike
Summary: My attempt at breathing a bit more meaningful life into their last encounter of S10. I'm still salty.





	Headcanon

It started after her first disappearance, on a flight to nowhere North Dakota. She was flipping through a dossier and he was dozing, as per usual. She heard a mumbled version of her name and threw a distracted “Hm?” his way without glancing up. “Scully.” Firmer, more forceful this time. She looked over, annoyed, and spat “What Mu-“ and realized he was still asleep, but fitfully so. His breathing was coming in pants, nostrils flared and his brow was beaded with perspiration. A wave of realization and tenderness crashed over her, but rather than wake him and have a Conversation About This, she reached over and slipped her index finger into his fist, a cool palm over his tight, hot one. She spoke calmly, “Mulder, I’m here.”  A thumb twitched, and his breathing began to slow.

She would say this again, many times over many years: Bedside after bursting through adjoining doors, she’d crouch low and soothe them into his subconscious, hand on his damp shoulder. Sometimes she’d say it in response to that atrocious abomination of her last name, “Scullaayy!” She could poke fun, but he only said that when he was afraid, so she’d answer with his name, and he’d know the rest. Sometimes it would be the only thing she could coherently string together at 3am, hitched breathing on the other end of the line, but it was enough. 

It got worse when she got sick. 

He never told her about the time she'd said them in her sleep, when he’d been smothering his sobs into her bedding at Trinity Hospital. Red eyes wide with terror, he’d looked up, petrified he’d disturbed her rest and already mentally punishing himself for his selfishness. He’d come there, a lost man seeking refuge from the storm, and her pale lips had softly muttered his salvation between shallow breaths. She hadn’t stirred, her lashes hadn’t fluttered, exhausted even in sleep.  


The night his mother died, she’d stroked his hair and repeated them rhythmically as she'd rocked him, her promise bringing the only comfort that had allowed him to finally sleep.  


She’d called them out desperately in an abandoned shack in Georgia, sweaty and reaching and bleeding with their son squalling perfectly on her chest. His world fell away with the sound of their combined cries. Life at that moment ended and began, death and rebirth illuminated by candlelight and consecrated in blood. His family. He’d found purpose in life anew.

But stars born from supernovas are destined to fade.

Leaving had been impossible. Every cell in his body thrummed with the impulse to run back to them and beg for another way, back to the place she described on the bottom of a polaroid he’d snapped after William had nursed and they’d both been dozing contentedly. 

She’d confiscated it still sticking from the end of the camera later that afternoon and written the words in bold black ink, a firm reminder--“We’re here.” It was the only time she'd used 'we'-- and slipped her bible into his suitcase. The flimsy photograph bookmarked Ecclesiastes 11:5, “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.” Upon finding it at his first stop in Missouri, he’d known what it was like to mourn as a father. He felt gutted and hollow and lost. No truth was worth this. It couldn’t be. He’d curled onto the bed with it crushed in a sweaty fist that first night, bellowing tearless sobs. The next morning he’d reverently returned it to its home between the gossamer pages, murmuring apologies for his rough treatment, and never touched it again.

The words had been blessings, kissed along his cheeks and nose and chin, a trail of salty tears marking their placement. After speeding uncounted miles he’d pulled over when the urge to relieve himself had become too great. He hadn’t expected her to wake but when they both were back in the vehicle he found himself unable to move, immobile from the shock and upheaval of the last few hours. She’d taken his hand and called his name and he hadn’t responded. He knew what she’d begun to think, that he was finally blaming her. 

In an uncharacteristically desperate fashion she crawled into his lap and took his face in her hands, repeating his name, panic creeping into her voice. He’d crushed her to him and breathed, “You’re here,” into her hair, absently taking note of its length. She'd begun to sob in relief. The next few minutes became a blur of teeth and tongue and awkwardly discarded clothing. Even as he shook and spasmed inside of her, he’d been unable to believe. Her words had brought him home again, so he'd cried amongst her kisses and laughed in spite of himself and in spite of them and their life and their terrible, terrible loss. At least she was there.

Only once had he feared the words had lost their meaning. He’d come out of his office, in a sparse moment of clarity and had called her name. She appeared from the kitchen, coffee in hand and hair mussed from slumber. It must have been morning. His name had ended with a question mark, clearly surprised by his emergence and the rest of the phrase had gone flat. Her eyes were wide but vacant, “I’m here.”

And then one day he emerged and found that she wasn’t.

The phone calls began again. Sometimes with her name slurred drunkenly on the other end, choked with desperate tearful apologies and promises, sometimes nothing but cold, furious silence. But still he called, and she’d said the words.

And now her heels clack mercilessly on the wet pavement as she runs, taunting her… not yet not yet not yet not yet… 

She begins to chant the words breathlessly.  She hopes that he can hear them in what could be his final moments, she sends them out over the chaos and her labored breathing.

So when she gets to him sees that his eyes are open, she speaks them clearly, to make sure he knows.


End file.
